1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to an active hood hinge device for vehicles and more particularly, to an active hood hinge device for vehicles which, when a pedestrian is hit by a vehicle, allows a hood bracket to increase in a lifting distance, thereby improving protection of struck pedestrians, while allowing an actuator to be made compact, thereby being applicable to compact vehicles.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, active hood hinge devices are mounted to connect a hood panel for covering an engine room to a vehicle body at both rear lateral sides of the hood panel. When a pedestrian is accidentally hit by a vehicle, the active hood hinge device allows the rear side of the hood panel to lift in order to prevent the head of a pedestrian from colliding directly with the engine, transmission, or other rigid part of the vehicle.
A conventional active hood hinge device is shown in FIGS. 1 and 2. In the figures, the structure of the conventional active hood hinge device is such that an actuator 1 and an actuator bracket 2 are directly coupled together, and a hood bracket 3 which is coupled to a hood panel is connected with the actuator bracket 2 by means of a plurality of connection links 4. However, the conventional active hood hinge device has a problem in that, because the actuator 1 directly operates the actuator bracket 2, a lifting distance L1 of the hood bracket 3 according to the operation of the actuator 1 is not large, thus insufficient to protect a pedestrian.
Further, since the capacity and therefore the size of the actuator 1 should be large in order for the actuator 1 to directly operate the actuator bracket 2, it is difficult to install the conventional actuator 1 having a large size in a vehicle due to interference with a cowl panel 5 at a section thereof (e.g. M1 in FIG. 1), making it impossible to be applicable to compact vehicles.
The information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the general background of the invention and should not be taken as an acknowledgement or any form of suggestion that this information forms the prior art already known to a person skilled in the art.